Monday, October 10, 2016

Once Upon A Time 6x03 Review: “The Other Shoe” (Popping the Question) [Contributing Writer: Julia Siegel]


“The Other Shoe”
Original Airdate: October 9, 2016

Cinderella and Prince Thomas are back after appearing once in season one. Why are they back? Well, now is a nice time for a redemption story for Emma, who is continuing to struggle with keeping her secrets. Even though they haven’t appeared in five years, all of the regular characters act as if it’s no big deal for Cinderella and Prince Thomas to be the central story for a day. At least “The Other Shoe” goes along with the untold stories theme and ends with a decent “twist.”

GLASS SLIPPER 


Cinderella’s first episode showed half of her classic story, so it was fitting that the new episode would tell the rest of her tale. This probably should have happened a long time ago and doesn’t make the most sense to do now, but it still worked pretty well. The story of the prince’s ball and how he met Cinderella unfolds in the same way that has been told many times, which wasn’t surprising. The only difference was the attendance of Snow White and Prince Charming at the ball. Snow actually gives Cinderella the confidence to go speak to Prince Thomas, and the rest is history.

The untold story here was the relationship between Cinderella and her stepsister, who decided to run away with Prince Thomas’ servant. Cinderella winds up spilling the beans of her stepsister’s location to her evil stepmother, who highly disapproves of her daughter’s engagement. The bad blood comes back to haunt Cinderella in Storybrooke, where she is nearly killed by her evil stepmother.

EMMA TO THE RESCUE!


After a few weeks of hiding a massive secret and dealing with mental trauma, Emma is finally trying to live her life again after Archie gets through to her. Stubborn as ever, Emma doesn’t want to confront her possible fate and can’t move on. Archie finally convinces her that she can’t be afraid of the unknown and needs to take steps forward, not backward. It also doesn’t help that she can’t admit the truth to anyone because she fears hurting them. Honestly, if she does die, it’s going to hurt literally everyone, so why act all somber and not live what could be your last days to the fullest?

Emma sort of realizes that her mental instability is weakening her magic. She decides to help save Cinderella from herself and finds her just in time. Cinderella is bleeding out from a stab wound courtesy of her evil stepmother, and Emma is able to conjure up enough magic to heal and save her friend. This act should give Emma a much needed confidence boost because she was able to conquer a fear.

PROPOSALS 


There were two lovely proposals in this episode. Unsurprisingly, we get to see the brief start to Cinderella and Prince Thomas’ love story, which leads to his marriage proposal. In a moment of pure love after barely meeting each other, the fated couple was united. And they sort of lived happily ever after! The predictability of this story was justified because not even Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz can mess with Cinderella’s origin tale too much.

The second proposal was the one we have all been waiting for. That’s right, Emma and Hook are finally... moving in together! For a couple that has been taking baby steps for a few years, this is a big step in the right direction. Emma used her rediscovered confidence to ask Hook to move in with her. I feel that this simple move truly ratifies their relationship in the best of ways. As Cinderella tells Hook, he and Emma make a great couple and should live happily ever after together. Even though we don’t get to see a ton of the characters’ home lives, it would be great to go inside Emma and Hook’s new life together and see how things work out.

It will definitely be mentioned, but I’m sure that I am not the only one who would rather see first-hand what goes down in that household — especially when two very independent people who own a lot of leather jackets are going to be living together.

THE TEASER 


No episode of Once Upon A Time is complete without a nice tease for what’s to come. This time around, the Evil Queen decides that she’s not having enough fun in town and lets Mr. Hyde out of his imprisonment. With Storybrooke’s two fiercest villains on the move and working together, there should be some good storylines coming up. How Mr. Hyde and the Evil Queen will terrorize the citizens remains uncertain, but it should be fun to watch. All hail the Evil Queen!

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